Literatures of Medieval France

Presentation

The Chair in Literatures of Medieval France is devoted to the study of literature in French, Occitan and, to a lesser extent, in Latin during the emergence of Romance languages in the late fifteenth century.

The Chair’s mission was defined in Professor Zink’s inaugural lecture delivered on March 25, 1995. A year-by-year summary of his courses and a list of his publications and activities, as well as those of his colleagues, may be found in the Collège de France Yeok. An overview of progress in the Chair’s research programs is also available.

The path of Professor Zink’s personal research may be traced through the twelve books he has published since his arrival at the Collège de France.

Regarding the Chair’s collective research, it is organized around two main programs:

- Circulation and translation of medieval literary texts, as part of the research program funded by the Balzan Prize awarded to the professor in 2007. This program was expanded to include critical and theoretical approaches that, in the case of two symposia, reach our contemporary period in a comparative perspective.

- The Europe of philologists: publication of correspondence between the great European Romance language specialists from the second half of the nineteenth to the early twentieth century.

The results of these programs may be followed in their publications.

The Balzan Prize research funds also enabled Professor Zink to award three Romance Philology prizes to young researchers, supported by the international jury he has formed.